


Dog Days

by paracosim



Series: TAB [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble Collection, Fluff, Gen, Missing Scenes, open to prompts, sometimes a family is three english men with c-ptsd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paracosim/pseuds/paracosim
Summary: Missing scenes from my “Awful Boy” series.





	1. Chapter 1

Harry knew he made bad decisions.

People told him that regularly enough. He was rash. He had a temper. He was reckless and had an uncanny lack of self-preservation. It didn’t matter if Ron had been the one to tell him to swish his wand counterclockwise instead of clockwise, because he’d done it anyway, and would you jump off a bridge, Mr. Potter, if Mr. Weasley asked you to?

Harry made bad decisions.

But this was topping the list of idiotic choices he’d made in the last four years, because Snape had dropped a bottle of olive oil the night before and hadn’t bothered to do more than a halfhearted cleaning spell, and Harry—well. Here he was. And there was no Ron in sight to make excuses for him.

He took his socks off, squinting at the entryway between the living room and kitchen, gauging the distance between the sofa and doorframe. It would work, but only if he went at an angle. He’d seen this done on the telly during the times where he’d been free from his cupboard and left to tidy up the sitting room. Dudley always left the telly on. Logically, Harry knew it was only because Dudley didn’t want to put in the effort of turning the television back on and finding his channel again, but sometimes he couldn’t help but imagine his cousin had left it on as a gift to him. Some small kindness.

Whether he knew it or not, Dudley’s kindness was about to bear fruit.

He waited until Snape had turned away, back bent so far over his potion that his hair fell forward into his face, obscuring his view. And Harry made his move. Running towards the kitchen, he shifted sideways as he crossed the threshold, leaping onto the slick patch of linoleum. The soles of his feet caught in the oil, sending him shooting across the floor like a bullet. He was about to make contact—less than a foot—and Snape stepped out of the way so smoothly it was as if he’d known Harry’s plan all along.

He crashed into the counter, hips and knees throbbing from the impact. Bent double over the sink, Harry groaned pitifully and asked, “How’d you know?”

“Hm?” Snape hummed, not bothering to look up from the monkshood he’d promptly done back to mincing.

Harry dropped his head and groaned again. But before he did, he could have sworn he’d seen Snape smile, just a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is NOT the sequel! These are little tidbits of missing scenes in That Awful Boy, nothing more than 500 words here and there. Mostly it’s just gratuitous fluff I couldn’t fit into the more dreary setting of the actual fic.
> 
> This takes place between chapters 26 and 27.


	2. Chapter 2

For the last fourteen years, Severus Snape had offered up his life—his livelihood, his dreams, his plans for the future—to protect the boy. This was irrefutable fact, even if only three people knew it. He had given up everything. The travel fund he’d once meticulously saved for. The Potions journals he’d never managed to get published, left to rot underneath his bed at Hogwarts. His plans for opening his own apothecary. He’d given it all up for the boy.

“No,” Severus ground out, resisting the urge to slam his head against the table until he passed out. “For the last time, Potter, do not use the word  _ passionate _ for this.”

He had given it all up, and he was about to give up more, because he was going to kill this fucking child if he said moonstones were a libido-enhancer  _ one more time. _

“Why not?” Potter said sullenly, tapping his quill against the table and leaving black splotches. “Moonstone can increase confidence and lift your mood, right? I’d call that passionate.”

“And your inclusion of ‘excitement’? Moonstone promotes  _ calm. _ It enhances intuition and balances the mind. It does not incite passion.”

Potter paused, frowning at his essay. “Oh. Yeah, that’s a better way to word it. Thanks, Professor.”

“Don’t test me. Another word. Use it, now, before my patience wears thin.”

“It’s already worn thin.”

“ _ Now. _ ”

He’d given up everything for the little cretin, but God if he wasn’t about to send all that down the drain today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can’t believe I didn’t make this joke on the last chapter but 
> 
> HARRY JAMES POTTER COME HERE AND GETCH Y’ALL JUICE
> 
> This one takes place in chapter 9.


	3. Chapter 3

“What’s this?”

For a few seconds, Severus almost didn’t register the words. He squinted at his book, tracing a finger beneath the sentence he was following, and then glanced up as the boy pulled himself upright from where he’d been hanging upside down over the sofa. There was something in his hand. “What is it?” he said tiredly, rubbing his eyes. Perhaps it was time to invest in a better lamp, else his eyesight might begin to suffer from late night readings…

“Er—Professor, is this yours?” Potter asked, lifting whatever he’d found in the air.

“Elaborate,” he said, finally looking up from his book altogether—and he saw a thick stack of papers. He’d gotten them from under the… “Give me that,” he snapped, getting to his feet and snatching them away. Were they notes on spells? Dark magic? Something from Lily? “What have I told you about snooping?”

“It was right under here,” Potter protested, slipping off the sofa to join him at his armchair. Severus tilted the papers away from him, shielding them from view.

He shuffled through the mess with a frown, not entirely comprehending what he was seeing. These…these were…?

Hovering at his side, Potter asked, “What is it?”

“No idea,” he lied after a beat, slipping the papers between the pages of his book. He stood and stepped away. “It’s late and you should be getting to bed.”

“Did you draw them?” the boy asked, backing up a pace, towards the kitchen.

Severus looked at him in disgust and pressed the book hard against his ribs. “Do remember to brush your teeth. I wouldn’t hold it against Lupin to check on your dental health sometime during the month.”

“ _ Professor. _ ”

“I expect you to bathe at a reasonable hour tomorrow,” he went on, already halfway through the stairwell entrance. Pausing, he leaned back out and said, “Don’t stay up too late. I won’t be providing a headache draught if you deprive yourself of sleep,” and snapped the bookshelf shut.

Back in his room with the door closed and locked, he let the book fall open in his lap to reveal a twenty-year-old stash of aged sketches.

Back before the mill had gone under and his father had been laid off, lost to drink and cynicism, Tobias Snape had been a decent hand at drawing. It had been a source of both derision and wonder on his mother’s part. “You could always become an artist, Toby,” she’d sneered once, when he’d returned home to sway in the living room, cold fire in his eyes and whiskey on his breath—wallet empty for the third time that month. “Sketch the neighborhood gang for a pence or two, out on the corner like one of the cheap whores you’d love to tumble with.”

(Severus hadn’t slept that night, head buried in his pillow with soothing chants at his lips, the air shallow and humid beneath his blankets. And when he’d dared to venture down the stairs in the morning, he’d found the house empty, with only a smoldering heap of sketches in the hearth. A render of himself had been visible at the top.)

He’d salvaged what he could over the years. A painting of a sunflower here, a smudged sketch of a robin there. A horse, once, detailed so finely it must have taken his father hours to complete it. And ones of himself—dozens of them. A portrait of a pudgy-cheeked baby. A toddler with a mischievous grin. A scowling boy with hair too long and too dirty. And, in the corner of an old bill so faded it was unrecognizable, Eileen, dressed in white.

These were yellowed from decades and so dusty he left streaks on his robes, but were no less loved than the others. Severus hesitated to touch them. He couldn’t help but feel afraid of the stack, like the paper would disintegrate at his touch, fogged memories of happier times lost in an instant. It wasn’t until the light shut off downstairs with a  _ snap _ that he managed to stroke the faces of two children standing side-by-side at the riverbank, arms wound tightly together. Then, clicking off his own lamp, he reached down to tuck the the drawings beneath his mattress with the rest of the pile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said these were going to be pure fluff, but apparently I lied, because this wasn’t fluff. This was sadness.
> 
> Anyway the alternate title of this fic is Area Man Writes Small Domesticity for his Big Domesticity.
> 
> This one takes place between chapters 12 and 13.


	4. Chapter 4

In hindsight, Harry should have known Snape could cook.

There had been only a handful of times, up until recently, that he’d ever seen Snape brew, but he’d known there was a reason he was called Potions  _ Master  _ and not Potions  _ professor. _ Discovering Snape knew how to cook shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But Harry hadn’t expected  _ this. _

He watched as Snape sprinkled an indiscernible amount of spices over the pot on the stove before tipping in a dash of what he suspected might be Worcestershire sauce. With one hand he stirred counterclockwise, feverishly adding diced vegetables and chunks of beef with the other. Then, so quickly Harry almost missed it, he switched hands, stirring clockwise as he reached for a new container of spices. Harry sat and stared in silence as Snape adjusted the heat and set a timer before collapsing into the chair across from him.

“What’s the timer for?” he asked, frowning at it. It was just soup, wasn’t it?

…Wasn’t it?

“What?” Snape muttered, chewing on his thumbnail.

_ It’s not a potion, _ he thought, bewildered.  _ You don’t need to set a timer. _

“Er…never mind.”

They sat quietly for a while. Then, when the timer chimed, Harry leaned back and pulled his legs onto his chair as Snape launched himself back onto his feet and over to the stove.  _ He’s treating it like it’ll explode if he doesn’t keep up. _

“What…what are you making?” he asked, lifting himself in his chair to take a peek. It smelled good, at any rate.

“Beef stew. Sit down.” Snape sounded lost in his own world. His hands seemed to move on autopilot.

He sat. Picking at the stuffing in his chair cushion, Harry waited until he could hear the stew bubbling to ask, “Will it be done soon?”

There was no response. Instead, Snape pushed his hair out of his face and bent low to mutter darkly at the sputtering stove.

Supper was ready in record time. (Harry suspected he’d used magic to somehow speed along the process.) They sat, enveloped in a silence so awkward it was almost tangible, before finally Harry picked up his spoon with shaking fingers and took a bite. It was incredible. Breathing deeply over his bowl, he took another bite, and then another, before realizing Snape hadn’t moved an inch. His inscrutable eyes were locked on Harry’s face.

What did he want? Harry wondered, pulse racing. He clenched his spoon in a white-knuckled grip. “It’s—” His voice cracked. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “It’s delicious.”

Snape nodded once and dug into his own stew without a word. But Harry didn’t miss his satisfied smile before it flickered out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one can convince me otherwise that Severus is so used to working at an extremely fast pace to the point where he even cooks like he’s trying to dismantle a bomb.
> 
> I’m trying to get at least 4-5 chapters written of the sequel to TAB before I finally upload it, so it’s taking a while. In the meantime, enjoy this little snippet I wrote in five min on my phone, that’s probably riddled with grammatical errors and embarrassing typos.
> 
> This is from an early chapter, during their first dinner together!


	5. Chapter 5

During his first week at Spinner’s End, Harry had been grudgingly impressed by Snape’s meals. They had never been anything less than superb. The fish melted in his mouth with every bite. The stews were hearty and flavorful. The eggs were the perfect mix of solid and runny. The toast was perfectly crisp. The coffee smelled like what he thought ambrosia might taste like.

And that was the extent of it. Snape, Harry found out soon enough, could not cook to save his life.

When he was first forbidden from cooking every night, Harry hadn’t been worried. Annoyed, but unconcerned. But on their third night of fish and broccoli, he’d begun to notice a…pattern.

“Dammit,” he muttered, rummaging through the cupboards. It was late, an hour or so after Snape had sequestered himself upstairs, and Harry had spent every last moment of that hour attempting to find some semblance of a cookbook in the house.

It had to have been Hogwarts that did it. As far as he knew, none of the professors cooked their own meals. The House-Elves would probably riot if they tried.

But Snape had been raised Muggle, as far as Harry could tell. He came  _ here _ in the summer. The man  _ had _ to know how to make more than fish, stew, and sandwiches.

“What the hell are you doing?” Snape growled from behind him. Harry didn’t turn around, feverishing flipping through the bookshelves in the living room. “Why are you rattling about at”--he paused--“three in the morning?”

“Looking for something,” Harry muttered, shoving books haphazardly back into the shelf.

To his surprise, Snape didn’t seem entirely incensed. His hair was askew, feet bare beneath his nightshirt, and on his face was a look of absolute bewilderment. “Have you managed to lose what little bit of brain you’ve ever seemed to have had, Potter?”

“I’m just a little…” Harry trailed off, weighing word choices in his head, before finally setting on, “ _ concerned. _ About breakfast tomorrow.”

Snape stared at him. The furrow between his brows, and the way his mouth hung slightly agape, struck Harry as terribly funny all of a sudden, and he found himself gasping for breath on the floor with the ceiling spinning before him. “Fuck this,” he heard Snape mutter. “Potter,  _ do _ try not to maim or otherwise injure yourself before the breakfast you’re apparently so concerned over. I expect it to be finished by the time I wake. And whatever you decide to make that has you so  _ concerned _ had better not send me off with a one-way trip to Saint Mungo’s. Good _ night. _ ”

Harry rolled onto his side to watch Snape stomp back up the stairs, and didn’t stop laughing until a door slammed somewhere above him and the realization of what Snape had said hit him. It was his turn to cook? All that worry, and for nothing...  _ Oh, thank God. _

Maybe he’d make omelettes in the morning…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a bit rushed, sorry for the oddness of it. I've been dying at work every day to come home and write, but the moment I step inside my house...poof. gone. Hopefully that'll change soon though and I'll get some progress done on the sequel to TAB and The Path!


	6. Chapter 6

The first time it happened, Harry thought it was a fluke.

Snape didn’t often brew with them during lessons, and when he did so he was often greeted with groans from a class awaiting a torturous two hours, but everything was different away from Hogwarts.  _ Snape _ was different away from Hogwarts. He wore Muggle clothing during outings to Tesco, ranging anywhere from tight-pressed formal to shockingly casual, he smoked in the garden when he thought Harry wasn’t looking, he often fell asleep in the armchair reading, and—well, he sang when brewing.

He first became aware of it when he’d awoken one night, groggy and needing the loo, only to still at the sound of a low hum resonating from the kitchen. It cut off the moment he dared sit up and the spell was broken. And after he’d fallen asleep again, Harry could scarcely remember it the next morning. A dream, maybe, or a car droning in the distance.

Then it happened again. And again.

And now he knew he hadn’t been imagining things, because from off the side of the room, Harry lay and listened as Snape hummed tunelessly to the sharp  _ thwok _ of a potions knife. It had begun sometime after he’d drifted off for a mid-afternoon nap; Snape must not have known how light a sleeper Harry actually was during the day, because he was making no effort to keep it down.

_ No one will ever believe me, _ he thought wistfully, settling in to enjoy the private moment he’d been gifted, a privilege no others at Hogwarts would ever hope to experience.  _ Not even Hermione. _

Yeah…things were different away from Hogwarts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay I left on a cliffhanger in TPP and I still need to rewrite 400 words of The Path so here I am to procrastinate with another tiny short


	7. Chapter 7

“What,” Harry said one morning, propping himself up on an elbow as Snow Crash slipped from his fingers. “What are you…wearing?”

Snape looked at him balefully through a curtain of greasy hair. He yanked at the collar of his shirt—his  _ pink _ shirt—and snapped, “Laundry day, Potter. Gather up your belongings. Do not forget your socks.”

“Are you wearing a blouse?”

“ _ Socks, _ Potter,” Snape said, voice a touch too high. He pulled at his collar again and exhaled sharply. “I shan’t repeat myself again.”

Harry couldn’t quite bring himself to move for a moment. Then, tossing Snow Crash aside, he rolled off the sofa to crouch low to the floor and pretend to search for wayward socks beneath the furniture. “Right,” he said, muffling his voice with his hand as he tried in vain not to grin at the legs of the coffee table. “Right, sir. Sorry.”

From off to his right, Snape huffed a nonsensical string of words to which Harry could probably guess the meaning without much effort, and fell silent.

They worked in tandem to retrieve the odds and ends that had been cast throughout the room throughout the week, tossing shirts and socks into a growing pile near the hidden staircase. They spoke rarely—brief “heres” and the occasional, “sorry, didn’t mean to throw it that hard.” And whenever Harry dared to look up for longer than a second, he was met with a silent glower and another yank at the collar of that bafflingly pink shirt.

“That’s all, I think,” Harry said once he’d finished scrounging through his trunk. He kept his eyes firmly on the floor. “D’you want me to fold them when they’re done washing?”

“Magic, Potter,” Snape said, and levitated the lot up the stairs without another word.

Later, Harry would pride himself on how long he managed to wait before bursting into laughter; but the slam of a door somewhere above him was all too telling, and as he settled himself back on the sofa with his book, he could have sworn he heard Snape cursing his name.

That same evening, Snape came to dinner wearing his black teaching robes. And Harry most certainly did not mourn the loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snape totally still has his mum’s blouse from The Prince’s Tale in Deathly Hallows. It’s been demoted to laundry day clothes.
> 
> Anyway I just moved for the ninth time in five years (yes really) so times have been hectic and haven’t allowed for much writing. I started a new job and had to leave the world’s best managers and coworkers behind so I’ve been pretty depressed anyway. But hopefully me writing this means I’ll be back in the swing of things soon. I should be asleep right now because I have work at 5am and it’s 10pm yet here I am


	8. Chapter 8

“Here.”

At the sound of a resounding  _ thunk, _ Harry looked up from the book in his lap, which he’d been half-heartedly flipping through for the last hour. Then he set the book aside entirely and straightened in his seat. In front of him was a television so old and dusty it would have been an insult even to collectors to call it vintage, all twisted antennas and half-screwed knobs, finished off with a glass screen that seemed to bulge forth like it was ready to explode.

“It’s,” Harry said, “a television.”

“It’s certainly not a microwave,” Snape said flatly, and though Harry couldn’t see his expression through the curtain of hair hanging in front of Snape’s face, he could almost tangibly feel the scowl on it. He was bent over the telly and fumbling with a set of rat-chewed cords, cursing under his breath. When Harry didn’t move, Snape looked up and ordered, “Help me get this working.”

“I’ve never set one up before, so I dunno how much help I’ll be,” he said, but slid off the sofa anyway and drew as close as he dared to, hyper aware of their close proximity. He ran the dough of his palm across the top of the television and scraped away what must have been a decade’s worth of dust. “So why, er…why did you bring this down here?”

“Your fidgeting is giving me a migraine,” Snape muttered, still struggling to untangle the cords. “Bored, are we, Potter?”

Harry grinned a little, feeling sheepish. He fiddled with one of the knobs and jolted a bit when it came loose in his hands. Pushing it back in place, he glanced at Snape and prayed he hadn’t noticed—which was ridiculous, because he was quickly coming to realize Snape noticed  _ everything _ he did. “Well, yeah. A bit. Haven’t got anything to do, really, with my homework done and Snow Crash finished.”

With a clatter, Snape threw the cords to the floor and hissed a long string of curses filthy enough to make even Dudley blush, and instead threw himself into dusting his ancient monstrosity with a rag he’d seemingly produced from nowhere—and perhaps he had, Harry thought as he dove to retrieve the cords and had a go at untangling them himself. Wizards, and all that rot.

“What will we be watching?” he asked as they worked in tandem.

“ _ You, _ ” Snape said with heavy emphasis, “will have an assortment of films to choose from. And you will only be watching one, because Lupin is arriving early tomorrow, and I shan’t have you exhausting yourself over something as inane as  _ Jaws. _ ”

“Uncle Vernon likes that one, I think,” Harry said conversationally. “Aunt Petunia hates it.”

“Tuney would,” Snape muttered under his breath.

Harry was more than prepared to ruin Snape’s decent mood and question the nickname  _ Tuney _ when, with a satisfying  _ slap, _ a large clump of cords fell to the floor, leaving him with half his work done for him. “There!” he announced, lifting the jumble in his hands. “I got some of them untangled.”

“How…” Snape looked at him, and then at the floor, before he exhaled sharply and turned back to the telly. He seemed to take personal offense to Harry’s success where he had failed, as his scrubbing became less thorough and more ferocious. He was gripping the rag so tightly his knuckles were white, jamming his palms against the top of the telly like he was trying to peel it off with his bare hands. Shaking himself out of his momentary stupor, Harry went back to separating the cords, wedging the tips of his fingers into whatever nook and cranny he could find while Snape cleaned next to him.

“Take your pick,” Snape said a time later, after they’d fiddled with the plugs and shocked themselves a dozen times each before learning what input went where. He’d hauled down a rotting cardboard box full of cassettes and VHS tapes, and what looked to be an ancient video game console Harry couldn’t even begin to guess at the name of, but that had most certainly seen better days.

“Jaws sounds as good as anything,” Harry said eventually, once he’d dragged out the entirety of Snape’s film collection and realized there was almost nothing he was interested in. “This is a color telly, isn’t it?”

“My father saved for months to buy it,” Snape said, and then added more quietly, “I didn’t think he knew what a savings fund was until he saw it in a pawn shop.”

Instantly intrigued, because Snape had never in his memory offered up a piece of himself, of his thoughts or his history, Harry asked, “How excited was he when he finally bought it?”

“Twenty minutes, perhaps,” Snape said, with a cruel-edged smirk, “before he realized he didn’t have a single film to watch on it.”

The movie began flicked with static, and the sound was tinny and distorted, but Snape knocked his fist against the side of the telly and the picture jumped into place with minimal complaint. They didn’t have any of the snacks Aunt Petunia usually set up for Dudley, no popcorn or ice cream, but Harry figured the mason jar full of cold water Snape had brought him was as good as anything. He settled himself on Snape’s ancient sofa and arranged his blankets around his legs as a drunk man and a girl named Chrissy ran to the beach to have a swim. And it didn’t take long for it to go more than a little bad from there.

“So, er,” Harry said, as the screams of a dying girl filled the room and Snape stood frozen in the kitchen, staring in stunned disbelief at the telly, “what sort of movie did you say this was again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one takes place sometime during the last few days of Harry’s stay, and was made possible by gryffinclawnerd on tumblr who helped kick my ass into gear. Ty friend.
> 
> The video game console Harry sees is a Fairchild Channel F. My dad owns one, because I come from a huge video game and computer family. (Dad started building computers and coding as a hobby when he was 12. He built an arcade machine from scratch a few years ago. It sits in his dining room and has hundreds of old games, including ones like Frogger and Shooting Gallery.)
> 
> In other news, I’ve almost finished another chapter of TPP, and it’s a long one too!

**Author's Note:**

> This is NOT the sequel! These are little tidbits of missing scenes in That Awful Boy, nothing more than 500 words here and there. Mostly it’s just gratuitous fluff I couldn’t fit into the more dreary setting of the actual fic.


End file.
